


take care, my darling

by greenbergsays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 15:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12914874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbergsays/pseuds/greenbergsays
Summary: The one where Bucky is royally pissed that no one has taken care of Steve in his absence.





	take care, my darling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mara_jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mara_jade/gifts).



> Written for **brbtherescookies** / **mara_jade** as part of the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction.
> 
> The request: a canon compliant fic that focuses on Steve's self destructive tendencies & protective Bucky that wants to take care of him.

The Soldier --

No, that wasn’t right. He called himself Bucky now.

He was James Buchanan Barnes, according to history books, museum exhibits, and a man with blonde hair that the Soldier-- _Bucky_ \--knew deep in his bones that he could never hurt again. That man was precious. He was a treasure; a shining light that must be protected at all costs.

Bucky didn’t remember his past. At least, he couldn’t remember in any true sense. His memory -- what little of it he had now -- was little more than fragmented flashes. They were snapshots without context and most of them were from far more recent times than the second world war, much less before that.

He remembered pain and the bite of metal against his wrists. He was afraid, but he didn’t know why.

He remembered blood and screams. Pleas for mercy. He was never sure if they were his own or if they belonged to his victims.

He remembered smooth metal under his fingertips, the hilt of a knife in his hands, flashes of many terrified, tear-streaked faces.

And though no one else knew it, he also remembered bright red hair and surprisingly strong thighs around his throat.

 _Natalia_.

That particular snapshot was always accompanied by a sense of pride and affection. He thought that she might’ve been his favorite of the spiderlings, but he couldn’t be sure. He never asked her, because any idiot can see that she carried her past as he did: a burden around the neck. It wasn’t a chain that he would pull on against her will.

Most of what Bucky had now, after breaking free of his prison, was the only ally the Soldier ever had: _instinct_.

Instinct helped him move through the world like a shadow. It helped him survive and it helped him fight. Eventually, instinct also brought him home. It brought him back to Steve.

Instinct was what told him that Steve _was_ home.

And after a week of silent observation, it was instinct that said every fucking Avenger in that godforsaken compound was on his shit list.

*

Thing was, Steve had never been particularly good at taking care of himself. He was more apt to look after someone else’s health and well-being and completely forget his own.

When they were kids, it wasn’t too bad. Steve would ignore his own needs right up until his body decided to remind him that he _had_ to take care of himself or he’d end up dead. He’d have an asthma attack or come down with an illness or get into a particularly bad fight and for a few minutes or hours or days, he’d have to slow down. Recoup.

It wasn’t the best way to live life, but it was Steve’s way. Bucky let it be most of the time. It was only when he worried about Steve doing his health irreparable damage that he threw an honest to God fit.

“I’m not an invalid,” Steve would say, ornery as ever, always with a scowl.

“No shit,” Bucky would reply, sometimes with a derisive snort, and shove whatever he needed -- whatever he was denying himself -- at him, anyways.

Steve was shit at taking care of himself, it was true, but his body never allowed him to push that too far. It reminded him when necessary that without _some_ care, Steve would not live much longer.

For the most part, Steve listened to those unspoken warnings and when he didn’t, Bucky did.

It was only after the serum that things worsened. Steve, if anything, neglected himself _more_. He needed little sleep, but he slept even less than what he needed. He ate less, too, even though he required more of that now. He ran himself absolutely ragged and didn’t fuel himself up properly to offset the number of hours he spent in training or combat.

This body, though -- this new, tall, muscular body -- it didn’t remind Steve the way his old body did. It never forced Steve to stop and take a breath or stop and eat or just _stop_ , period, for a while. This body was harder to kill, harder to slow down, and nobody tested that more than Steve did.

It was Bucky’s job to make sure he never succeeded.

“Make sure that kid doesn’t kill himself,” Colonel Phillips had told him gruffly when the team was still fresh and new.

Even if he hadn’t, Bucky would’ve considered it his job. The Colonel's request just gave him a fairly good excuse to fall back on, should anyone question him too much about it.

The men liked to give him shit about nagging Steve to sleep or eat or to just rest for a few minutes.

“Here comes Mother Barnes,” they’d warn Steve, laughing uproariously as they dodged a blow from Bucky himself.

Bucky never cared. He’d rather get shit for keeping Steve alive than live without the dumbass.

In the future -- or in the present, depending on how you liked to look at it -- Bucky didn’t remember most of those things. He knew enough to know something wasn’t right, though.

His first night in the compound, they ate dinner together. Steve, Bucky, and the core Avengers; Wilson, Stark, Barton, and Natalia. Vision didn’t eat and the Witch, while a proper member, still hadn’t been in the game as long as they had. She required more time to herself to process things sometimes.

“She’s still new,” Steve explained quietly, as they set the table that night. “I think she feels a bit like she’s intruding sometimes, but going out of your way to include her only makes her feel worse. She likes to spend more of her time with Vision. I think they connect better.”

Bucky listened dutifully as he talked, but declined to make a proper comment. If he had, he might’ve said that he understood why the two of them connected. She wasn’t a warrior like the rest of them and neither was Vision.

In the end, all he said was, “Makes sense.”

Still, Steve gave him a soft, lopsided smile, as if he knew what Bucky thought and he agreed with it.

Dinner was a quiet, unremarkable event with Steve’s team. They ate, keeping the conversations light and cordial. The team was still feeling him out, still trying to figure how just how much Soldier he still was.

The sour note came when Steve got up to clear his plate. He’d only had one helping and there were still remnants of food on his plate; he hadn’t even finished that one helping.

Bucky looked around, waiting. Surely, someone on the team would know to keep an eye out. Surely, they’d notice the complete lack of a proper helping that their Captain had given himself for dinner. He waited for one of them to tell Steve to sit his ass back down and eat some fucking food -- one always had to be stern with Steve. Anything kinder and he’d take it was coddling.

Steve Rogers hated being coddled.

No one did. No one even spared him a glance.

When Bucky took his third helping, however, Sam did glance up at him.

“Damn, Barnes,” he said, “you plan on stopping anytime soon?”

Bucky glanced pointedly at Steve, who despite being finished, still sat at the table as the others ate. Steve -- because he wasn’t a fucking moron and knew exactly what Bucky wasn’t saying -- looked away.

Over the next several days, Bucky noticed similar instances.

Steve ate the bare minimum and no one said a word. Steve was the first to rise and the last to sleep and no one said a word. He trained twice as much as even the Widow, before and after battles, and _no one_ said a word.

He was running himself ragged, but his perfect body didn’t make him slow down and that just made Steve push harder.

Something had to be done.

*

**From: Steve**

**_Meet me in the living room._ **

*

“Steve, man,” Sam said as he meandered into the living room, tapping out a text message on his phone. “This better be important, I’m supposed to be meeting Stark in the lab to talk about my new wings.”

“Don’t worry, Wilson,” replied a voice that definitely was not Steve. “I won’t hold your tardiness against you.”

Sam looked up from his phone.

Tony smiled at him benevolently as he lounged on the couch in a most ridiculous, yet Tony-appropriate fashion. He closely resembled a fainting maiden from a Victorian painting. In his pocket, his own phone chimed with Sam’s incoming message.

Natasha was perched on the edge of the armchair that Clint was sitting in. She held up her phone, wiggling it between her fingers.

“You got a text from Steve, too?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said slowly. “What’s going on?”

“Not a clue,” Tony said, in that sarcastic, faux-bright way of his as he lurched into a sitting position. He pointed at Sam. “Your wings are ready, by the way. Just need a little test drive when we’re finished here.”

He removed his legs from the couch, setting his feet on the floor to give Sam room to sit. With no other alternative readily presenting itself and with his curiosity peaked, Sam had no choice but to take the unspoken invitation. He sat down, placing himself on the very edge of the cushion.

“You guys know that something isn’t right here,” he said, looking at the others. “Right? If Steve wanted to call a team meeting, he wouldn’t text us all individually.”

“Of course we know,” Natasha said. “But that just makes it curious, doesn’t it? If Steve didn’t text us, then who did? And why from Steve’s phone?”

She tilted her head just so, lips twisting in amusement. Natasha was, Sam reminded himself, a complicated woman.

“I did.”

Bucky came from the kitchen, sauntering around the corner. He was dressed down in a pair of jeans and that hoodie-jacket combo he seemed to like so much. His hair was pulled back into a messy bun, fists tucked into the pockets of his jacket. He was out of place in the bright, pristine facilities of the new Avengers compound, but he would’ve blended nicely into the crowd of any street corner of any major city around the world.

The three seated men all startled in one way or another at Barnes’ sudden appearance. Natasha merely inclined her head in his direction, her smile widening. She wasn’t just complicated; sometimes, she was scary.

“Only the four of us _?_ ” She asked. “No one else?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Vision and Maximoff -- they have nothing to do with this. Not yet. If that changes, I’ll be having this talk with them, too.”

“Oh?” Tony said. “And what talk would that be, Robocop?”

“All’a you,” Bucky replied, pointing at the gathered team, “are fuckin’ enablers and it stops here.”

They looked at each other, visibly confused. Even Natasha seemed unsure as to what, exactly, he was talking about.

“Enablers?” Clint asked finally.

 _“Enablers_ ,” Bucky repeated emphatically. “Do you know how much food a super soldier needs to eat? Do you know how many calories a day Steve _should_ be consuming? Because I fuckin’ do. And here y’all are, lettin’ him eat less than Stark, which is _saying_ something. Seriously, Stark, coffee and alcohol are not meals.”

Bucky glared at him, very pointedly, and Tony suddenly found the ceiling immensely fascinating.

“He needs four to six hours of sleep to be optimal,” Bucky continued. “You know how many he gets? Three, at best. He’s in the gym practically from sun up to sundown sometimes, and none of you say a damn word.”

“Cap’s a grown man,” Clint protested.

“I’m not saying that his way of coping is healthy, exactly,” Sam added, “but I think he’s earned the right to be a little fucked up about the shit that’s happened to him. A man can’t help his nightmares.”

“Y’all don’t seem to get it,” Bucky said. “This ain’t something new. This ain’t something he just started doing. Steve’s always been a self-destructive little shit. You gotta _make_ him take care of himself or he’ll run himself right into an early grave.”

As soon as Bucky said it, he knew it to be true. He hadn’t realized it before -- he didn’t have the memories to tell him -- but after the words fell out of his mouth, it solidified in his mind.

Steve, indeed, was a self destructive little shit. He had to be looked after or he’d get himself killed.

“What would you like us to do?” Natasha asked.

She looked somewhere between epiphany and contrition. As if she’d known all along that something wasn’t quite right, but it hadn’t connected until Bucky said it, and she was angry at herself for it.

“Just stay out of my way,” Bucky said, “and stop letting him get by with shit when you see it. I’ll take care of the rest.”

*

When Steve stepped out of his bedroom, he was hit square in the face with something big, warm, and soft. He was in just a t-shirt and sweats, in search of his shoes and a clean pair of socks so that he could go the gym.

The big something fell into his open hands and when Steve looked down, he found himself staring a deep blue sweater and a single sock of various whimsical colors, also thick and also fluffy. The other sock had fallen to the ground, escaping his grasp.

“What’s this?” Steve asked, looking up to find Bucky standing there. His arms were crossed and he was clearing.

“It’s twenty degrees outside,” Bucky snapped irritably, “and you know that you hate being cold. Put them on so I don’t have to hear your mouth.”

He turned on his heel, then, and marched toward the living room. He didn’t have to say anything for Steve to know that he was expected to follow. Bending to scoop up the second sock, Steve hurried after him.

“Buck,” he complained, even as he pulled the sweater on, “it’s fine. I don’t get cold anymore.”

Strictly speaking, that was a lie. Steve still got cold, he just handled it better now. Of course, that didn’t mean that he hated being cold any less.

When the sweater was on, he obediently put the socks on, hopping on one foot and then the other to keep up with Bucky.

In the living room, the couch was piled with pillows and blankets. The coffee table was covered in an assortment of foods, both of the snack and non-snack variety. Netflix was pulled up on the television.

“Don’t try that shit with me, Rogers,” Bucky said, “you forget I’ve got myself a serum, too. Maybe not as good as yours, but it’s enough. Sit your ass down.”

Steve sat his ass down.

Bucky plopped down beside him.

“Now, you and I,” he said, “are going to have ourselves a nice, relaxing day. I believe kids these days call it ‘vegging out.’”

Steve snorted.

“I was going to go to the gym,” he said, even though he now knew that such a plan was no longer possible.

Bucky was on a mission and one did not simply get in the way of that. It was like old times, in a way, and that made Steve’s chest hurt. It was a good hurt, full of warmth.

“Like fuck you are,” Bucky snorted. “You’re gonna get under these blankets, you’re gonna tell me what you want to watch, and then you’re gonna fuckin’ eat something. In fact, you’re not gonna _stop_ eatin’ until I’m satisfied that you’ve had enough.”

“Buck,” Steve complained, but his lips threatened a smile. It’d been a long, long time since he’d been at the receiving end of Bucky’s particular brand of concern. He’d missed it.

“Don’t even start that bullshit with me, Rogers,” Bucky replied. “I’m tired of your stubborn ass not taking care of yourself. That shit stops now, y’hear me? Eat a fuckin’ donut.”

There were, indeed, donuts on the table. Steve did as he was told.

Bucky leaned forward the pick up the remote. He only scrolled through a few titles before he sighed and set it back down again.

“I love you,” he murmured, turning to look Steve in the face. “You know that, right?”

Steve’s throat was suddenly tight. He swallowed thickly, ignoring the burn in his eyes.

“Yeah, Buck,” he whispered hoarsely. Clearing his throat, he repeated, “Yeah. I know.”

“I love you,” Bucky said again, “and it just -- kills me. Seein’ the way you treat yourself. Watchin’ you neglect your own fuckin’ needs while trying to fulfill everyone else’s. Things around here are gonna change. You’re gonna start eating right and sleeping right and you’re gonna start taking a fuckin’ break every once and awhile. I’m going to make sure of it. I just hope you’ll let me.”

Steve nodded, quick and clumsy.

“Yeah,” he said wetly, “yeah, I think I -- I think I will.”

He reached for Bucky and they met halfway, falling into a slow, hungry kiss.

Before the ice, Steve hadn’t known what it meant to be alone. He didn’t know what it was like not to have someone like Bucky there, always yelling and griping about his health, his well-being. Bucky had been a constant for as long as he could remember. Since before Steve could remember, even.

It wasn’t until after Bucky had fallen that Steve truly knew what it was that he’d lost. The intervening years between waking up from the ice and the fall of Project Insight, they’d been some of the worst of his life. But now Bucky was back and he still cared enough to fight with Steve about all the things that no one else had the guts to fight with him about.

Steve didn’t deserve it, but he wasn’t going to fight it, either. Not this time around.

“Love you,” Bucky whispered again, right against his lips. “And I want to keep on lovin’ you for a long time to come. I don’t want to have to bury you just ‘cause you’re a reckless, stubborn fool.”

No, Steve thought privately. Bucky didn’t need to know what that felt like. After everything he’d been through, Steve could spare him at least that.

“You won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

He meant it.


End file.
